The Grey Planet
by marpiich
Summary: Felix only planned on hitching a ride on the Party Boat to Freedom during the destruction of Starkiller Base. She did not plan on sticking around for the after-party on an isolated, eerie planet, amid people more myth to her than life. Then strange things start happening. NO romance. Sarcasm, military culture (skating and double platinum knee pads), and survival horror themes.


**The Grey Planet**

Felix only planned on hitching a ride on the Party Boat to Freedom during the destruction of Starkiller Base. She did not plan on sticking around for the after-party on an isolated, eerie planet in the Unknown Regions, amid unfamiliar surroundings and people more myth to her than life. No one will tell her anything about what is going on, but they won't let her contact anyone.

Then...strange things start happening.

I don't own shit. Well, I own Felix, opportunistic skating little shit that she is.

 **Prologue- Tedium**

* * *

ͼ

The thing about officers was that they always had the best shit. True, the Chiefs always had a full range of condiments even when the officers did not (what little things like that which were unknown wouldn't kill them), but what could not be hidden were things like _escape crafts_.

Starkiller Base was going tits up and Felix had negative intentions of being on the bitch when it blew.

The fact the planet was about to explode explained why, when the General— _the_ General—perfect ginger hair and uptight in an immaculate uniform, cool as the glaciers south of the equatorial trench in the middle of a literal planetary implosion, a person that _absolutely nobody she knew had ever seen up close before,_ swept purposefully into their midst as everyone was trying their best to get it together to evacuate and _demanded a driver_ , it caused a collective seizure that rendered everyone frozen and silent in vehicle hangar bay B01 from the officers to the lowest minion (yello).

Felix got her ass up and stuck her hand in the air. "I'll drive, sir!"

As an officer, no, _the_ officer in charge of all the other officers, _the_ General of the First Order, he was bound to have an absolutely idiot-proof means of getting off this frozen rock alive, and she meant to hitch a ride on some wings of freedom. Well, freedom for a given value—it's not like she could escape with her boss's boss's...boss and expect to get out of the First Order, but it wasn't like she was trying.

Paychecks were pretty good motivation, all considered. She wasn't a Stormtrooper, she was just a tech (and maybe now a driver... _fingers crossed_ ).

The man had never been more than a tiny image on a screen or a photograph they had all been made to memorize—plus they'd all watched the live feed of his speech and all his other weekly speeches—and he was sure to have zero fucking clue or fucks to give who she was, not that Felix really cared. She usually tried her best to not exist to her superiors anyway, and if she ever _had_ gotten his attention in the past it would have been under _phenomenally_ bad circumstances. The kind of circumstances that led to courts martial and summary execution, the kind that still pretty much left her a nameless idiot but maligned.

Thanks but no thanks.

No doubt, as far as he was concerned she had materialized into existence the very nanosecond she became immediately useful. He took a look at her, sized her up and down, and demanded to know if she could handle an all-terrain buggy. No one else had recovered quite yet from the dual shock of realizing that the planet was about to blow and that _the_ General apparently intended to go out for one last freezing joyride (not that he ever had, to her knowledge, indulged in such things...then again, she had no idea what he did with whatever free time he had. Probably microwaved small furry animals with tiny Death Star replicas).

"Yes, sir!" she'd replied, even though she had a rudimentary familiarity with the controls at best. Rumir had shown her once and let her do donuts in the corral. That counted, right? She could get it going and change gears. The rest was just details.

For a moment she stood petrified that her hopes of guaranteed continued existence would die, trashed under his clear scrutiny of her uniform (thank fuck she had worn the decent one today) and (lack of) rank. Then he grimaced, and nodded briefly.

"Very well; you'll do," he growled. He was pretty obviously pissed about something...

 _Well, I mean, Starkiller Base_ is _going tits up and all_. Felix couldn't quite imagine a scenario that was worse for him. Must suck to have years of your life's work go up in flames thanks to the Resistance.

She hurried out of line, unable to completely stop herself from grinning like an idiot. In her wake, shock, _pity_ —did they not realize just how dangerous their own position was?—disbelief. Angry disbelief. The last was distinctly pleasing to her; they were thinking: she's going for that double platinum kneepad award in the 11th hour. I hope she falls into an ice chasm. I hope she blows up. _Well, fuck you guys. It's not my fault you didn't answer the door when opportunity knocks_.

Felix ignored them and picked out the snow-trac vehicle that she knew had most recently been worked over and fueled up; there had been a watch round scheduled for later that day that was never going to happen. Hux climbed up into the passenger's seat as she fired the engine. If she liked anything on this plane of existence, it was to drive or fly. There was something about being _mobile_ ; it soothed her nerves.

So while, yes, on some level she was still _freaking the fuck out because they were all possibly_ _ **GOING TO DIE**_ , some of that anxiety leached away behind the wheel of the snow-trac. It wasn't actively blowing up yet, after all.

"Do you know where we're going, sir?" she asked. _Please tell me this isn't some weird freaky going down with the ship sort of thing. Because I'm_ totally _bailing and walking back. It's not like he'll be around to do anything about it in the future_. At least the controls of the snow-trac seemed intuitive enough. She wasn't having too many problems, even if the clutch was a little wonky.

"I have the coordinates," he replied shortly.

She pulled out into the eerie twilight, onto a salted tarmac that was full of frantically picked over equipment and materiel and an unnervingly apocalyptic sky. It was beginning to look like twilight after dark.

"So where to, sir?"

She saw then that he was holding some kind of small device; she glanced at it just long enough to realize it was a homing beacon tracker.

"That way," he said, and she drove. Fast; he snarled at her twice to go faster.

And she did, because she was increasingly mortally terrified of dying. Flying over the snowy terrain was an exercise in suicidal thoughts, but she kept it almost floored. The General would, intermittently, give her directions, pointing this way or that, and once he turned on her like she had deliberately pissed in his cereal, barking that she was going the wrong way.

"There's a valley," she offered, startled. "This is faster. We can continue that way once we get around it."

And fortunately that seemed enough to convince him, because he shot her one glance and let it go. At least he wasn't one of _those_ officers; the ones who didn't listen to reason because they felt it was more important to exert their authority.

Finally, he told her to slow down as he tinkered with his little pad; she looked overhead at the sound of sweeping, roaring ion engines. A huge black tri-winged ship—an officer's transport, _kriffing_ _yes_ , she could practically smell her salvation in its ion exhaust—passed above and then started to settle some distance away, folding its huge black wings above itself where it could actually land.

But the General was occupied with something else. Hux told her to stop, _stop_ (she had started braking)—" _STOP_ , that's an order!" he barked acidly, and Felix jammed her foot on the brake in fear. She bit her lip and stopped herself from protesting that braking hard in snow, even on a snow-trac, was dangerous and liable to send you spinning. In this forest they were likely to wrap themselves around a tree.

But they stopped. _Something out there loves me_.

"What is that?" she asked, staring at the patch all in black and dusted with fresh snow just to the left. The General immediately dismounted and struggled towards it. It looked like a person...wait...the back of her mind was pinging off in alarm. The planet was beginning to make serious noise...

"Get out, you're going to help me put him on the back end."

She did not find it difficult to hurry to obey, sliding out of the driver's seat and slogging through snow in pursuit of the General. She didn't realize until she was almost on top of him that it was Kylo Ren...only, instead of that unsettling, snouted black mask she had heard about, was a head of glossy dark hair and the reek of burning flesh alongside the icy scent of the forest. Well, Mirris was getting money later, if they both lived—Kylo Ren was as human as they were. His face, however, bore an ugly and fresh wound that scorched its way from his jaw across his cheek and the bridge of his nose, partially across his forehead. It was actually a fairly attractive face, stormy and beautiful for all that...but he, like the General, represented people whom it was far— _FAR_ —safer to fantasize about than consider a realistic option.

"What the hell happened to him?" she hissed in shock, hardly even expecting an answer, but didn't wait to slide around to Kylo Ren's feet. The General, not out of any particular consideration for her so much as an acknowledgment of their differentiated sizes and strength, went to Ren's shoulders.

The man was huge, and heavy. She struggled to carry his leaden weight, and she did _not_ want to mention that this would have been a lot easier if she had actually been working out like she was supposed to. She kind of had a physical fitness test coming up (supposed to anyway?) and...eh, she was planning on getting Rumir to partner off with her so she wouldn't fail.

But again, she was working off of adrenaline, and that helped a lot. She pushed his legs onto the back end and climbed back into the driver's seat, puffing. It was fucking cold out here. The general got back in the passenger's.

"Drive straight ahead," the General said. "We will meet my ship in the clearing."

"Roger that," she said quietly, reverting to trained statements to make up for the fact she had no idea what to say to the man instead, particularly under these circumstances. Surely, her role was not to provide conversation but to respond to directions. That was the role that would deliver her to somewhere-not-Starkiller-Base.

 _Oh stars, what is happening_. Kylo Ren, an unstoppable figment more smoke and shadows to the vast majority of the First Order—downed in the woods of Starkiller? How? What could possibly have laid that beast low?

General Hux was, by reputation, a complete hardass. Everything she had ever heard pointed to the fact that she did not want to fuck up now, having put herself in this position. He could fuck her world up if she ticked him off—but if she kept going, and did well, then...that was a good thing, right? Best case scenario, this passed by like a blip on the radar and she went on with her life, sinking back into comfortable anonymity on another ship, one which hopefully wouldn't get blown up. If she had somehow made a decent impression, then _maybe_ she might get a cushy shore position on some safe backwater world, one which had nothing on it. She liked _nothing_. _Nothing_ couldn't fucking kill you.

 _I regret everything about this situation_.

Granted, it did all demand the question: what the fuck was she even doing there. She rolled the snow-trac forward to get traction, then gunned it.

 _I ask myself that question every fucking day_. She had only signed up for active service because, as disinterested as she was in the whole Republic vs. exiled Empire went, it was just what was _done_.

The shuttle already had its ramp down, lights and running lights aglow in the weird semidarkness that surrounded them, and a dark-haired, harried Lieutenant stood at the foot of it with a First Aid kid and a floating gurney next to him.

Felix drove the snow-trac right up to the ramp, and parked it in a way that gave easy access to Ren.

The General hopped off just before she braked fully, and started snarling orders—"Get him inside! We need to get out of here, now!"

She helped the Lieutenant and the General transfer Kylo Ren to the gurney, and before anyone could tell her not to, she rushed up into the belly of the ship. She found herself blinking at an empty but otherwise spacious transport. Close behind was the General, who shot her a look of deepest irritation. She experienced a moment of terror where she thought he might order her back out into the snow and cold to die—and she would die if he sent her out again, with no time to get back to the hangar and no escape ships to escape on left—but he said, "Go help Lieutenant Mitaka."

Felix rushed to obey, so very glad to be on this ship and leaving. She went to help the Lieutenant who was trying to drag the gurney inside a little faster. Beneath her, though the back ramp was still in the process of closing, the ship lifted into the air and rose higher—

Kylo Ren's gurney was locked in gravitational place, the back end finally sealed shut. The General was barking orders to the bridge about hyperspace— _now!_

She felt the shuddering pull on the ship and let herself lean back into her restraints. It was familiar to her, close enough to a sharp acceleration to make little difference.

Safe in hyperspace. Once they were stable in it the ride was smooth as glass, and she let herself out of her restraints.

 _I'm alive._

 _I'm a fucking genius_. She watched the medics work over Kylo Ren in a hurry; the Stormtroopers were good at their work, but why couldn't the General have taken an actual doctor on board? She didn't dare ask where they were going, not that he was around to ask in the first place.

"Who are you?" asked an unfamiliar voice, so suddenly and unexpectedly that she nearly jumped out of her skin. She spun around, and found herself face to face with the Lieutenant.

"Sir! I...uh, I'm a tech, sir. Technical Apprentice Felix Reynolds. Sir. I work on the vehicles. Sometimes on the shuttles, not ones this nice though...I was in Sector B..." She was rambling, going into shock, but he seemed not to notice.

"A tech? Well, if we break down, we'll be glad to have you with us," the Lieutenant said, with a smile.

Felix relaxed marginally, despite herself. The General was off-puttingly intense, and Kylo Ren was known to be...well, scary as hell, in a TAKE EVASIVE ACTION kind of way. But this Lieutenant smiled easily enough, and it put her a little more at ease.

"You took General Hux out to retrieve Lord Kylo Ren on that snow-trac, in the middle of an evacuation?"

"Uh, yes, sir..."

"You are to be commended for your bravery, Reynolds," the Lieutenant said warmly.

"Thank you, sir." She still didn't know what to say, but she was sticking to the script. She wasn't a hugely personable person—she liked herself and that was about it—and anyway she wasn't about to chit chat with the General's personal aide, if that was who this Lieutenant was. It violated her anonymity initiative.

If, pleased with what she had done, they left her alone and simply reassigned her—that would be ideal.

* * *

ͼ

Ren had woken up less than twelve standard hours after they had fled Starkiller, but he was not chatty. In fact, most of what he had done was lie in the gurney and be resentful of everyone and everything. That was yesterday.

For lack of anything to do, Felix spent most of her time reading. There was limited space in the shuttle, and she tended to try and stay out of the main cabin, though, yet again at this red-hot minute, she had been exiled from the cockpit—super secret officer and pilot meeting stuff. Well, she felt unwelcome there when the door was open, anyway.

She looked up sharply at the sound of shifting fabric—

And flattened herself against the bulkhead, trapped in Kylo Ren's line of sight.

He said nothing at first; his eyes on her, furious.

"You."

She felt her heart stop a moment, then begin again. _Me? What did I do?_

Frantic to find and explain whatever in the hell she had done to even exist to Kylo Ren to a degree that she should garner such a pointed comment as _you_ , her mind kicked into high gear. But she still came up with nothing. She had seen him once or twice, but always at a great distance, dealing with people not even associated with her or her work. _And always wearing a mask_. Stars, he was young. He shouldn't know who the fuck she was, not enough to say _you_.

Needless to say she couldn't think of anything, and that was twice as upsetting.

"Bring me water," Kylo Ren commanded, unaware of or unbothered by her alarm.

"What? Oh—yes, sir—immediately-" She had to approach him to get at the cup by his gurney, but he tolerated her closeness with dark, predatory eyes.

When she returned with the cup full of water from the refresher, he managed to sit up on one elbow. She held the cup out gingerly, and flinched when his gloved hand brushed hers.

Unfortunately this had the dual effect of exposing his own reduced strength; the cup started to slip through his fingers.

She was seized with panic, but somehow didn't drop the cup.

 _Er...shit_.

Ren glowered, but didn't try again.

"I can...er...hold still," she stammered awkwardly. Then realized she had— "I mean, I mean—please, sir…"

Somehow she passed alive through the experience of slowly feeding the embodiment of the First Order's personnel's private nightmares three cups of water.

In the end, he slumped back, grimaced slightly, and then opened his eyes again as if gripped by a sudden horror. "Where is my weapon."

 _FUCK_.

"Weapon, sir?" Then she remembered hearing about the red lightsaber, and her blood ran cold. It hadn't even occurred to her. Thinking quickly, she said, "Let me go ask the General and—"

Felix suddenly found herself unable to breathe or even move, an invisible, squeezing pressure around her throat. She was dragged forward into his grip, far closer to the Knight than she had ever wanted to be. Close enough to see individual eyelashes and that his eyes weren't black, but such a dark brown they were close, a sinister, chaotic abyss. _Oh stars, I'm going to die!_ No feeble attempt to struggle away moved him, even while he was this weakened.

Hux's voice rang out, cutting, unwavering and unafraid: " _Let her go, Ren_."

Kylo Ren flung her away with a careless sneer and Felix collapsed to the deck.

Felix had always been somewhat skeptical of the veneration heaped on the General, figuring it was boring hero-worship or else a bunch of idiots who liked the idea of someone rather than the reality—her own opinion was limited to a generally positive one, based on the perception that he was a complete bastard, though fair—but at that moment she felt that admiration in all its shades and forms. As she gingerly picked herself up from the deck, General Hux swept into the belly of the ship as if there were no threat to his life.

The enmity between the two commanders was an open secret, much as the General did his best to restrict their disagreements to professional tit-for-tat and an impersonal, general distaste for the way Ren treated any of the First Order. She didn't mean to stick around to witness anything for herself. The General was the General because he had the ice-cold nerve to stare that chaotic evil down; Felix was, she knew she was, a meaningless peon, and a coward more interested in her own survival.

Felix hurried to the forward end of the shuttle, found the door open, and slipped into the cockpit. Two pilots and the dark-haired Lieutenant were there.

"Hello, sir," she offered weakly, as in her wake the sounds of Hux biting Ren's head off—not literally, much to their collective chagrin—and Kylo Ren giving as good as he got blasted quite audibly through the shuttle. It was no great wonder that they had heard what was going on; there could be no secrets on this ship except behind the closed doors of the cockpit. Felix glanced uneasily at the Lieutenant, who responded with a reserved, professional smile.

"Are you alright?" the Lieutenant asked, kindly.

"I'm fine, thank you, sir-"

"YOU WILL STAY IN BED, REN!"

Felix jumped hard as the General's roar shot through the shuttle. The Lieutenant's reaction was muted; an encouraging, long-suffering smile was all he offered to Felix but otherwise he didn't seem surprised. _What happens up there on that bridge?_

Suddenly, the General reappeared in the cockpit. Felix stepped out of his way in a hurry.

He didn't glance at her, he paid her no mind. Sometimes Felix hated the way people like her were normally invisible to people so far above— _I am a person!_ —but this was not the time or place or the person with whom to make an issue of it.

Creepy silence prevailed.

 _Wow, this is awkward. Just...staring off into hyperspace...all five of us…kind of weird_...

"Tech Assistant."

She looked up at the Lieutenant. He was looking at her specifically, with a low-wattage, pointed smile. He tilted his head just so, towards the door. He cleared his throat softly.

 _Please leave_ , he was saying. The silence was meant to last until the unwelcome element had absented itself, she perceived that now, and she was distinctly embarrassed.

It was a remarkably polite dismissal given the circumstances, and Felix hesitated for only a moment, despairing of being sent back into Kylo Ren's proximity. She forced herself to leave a moment later, just before she earned herself a reprimand from her highest superior, sparing one glance at the General, for whom she had ceased to exist again.

She heard and felt the swoosh behind her as the door closed on her heels. More super secret officer and pilot stuff, huh?

 _I am alive_. That was consolation enough. Felix bit her lip hard and tasted blood. _Now isn't the time to cry, stupid_. Why wouldn't they tell her where they were going? Were they not going to a First Order ship or planet? Which one?

* * *

ͼ

Four days—four days of boredom interspersed with the odd flash of fear brought on by a sulking Kylo Ren.

Felix was sick of being left alone.

She _still_ had no idea where they were going or about the other escape transports from Starkiller, but wherever they were headed it must be a long way away if it justified four days of hyperspace. Eventually, once the curiosity had become too much, she had asked the Lieutenant. He was the most approachable of everyone, but he only stiffened uncomfortably and came up with some line—a polite, apologetic line, but a line.

Felix had been around long enough to translate: it's above your paygrade. Don't ask, because you won't get any answers. In fact, ask enough, and you better hope you can breathe in space.

* * *

ͼ

On the fifth day, the ship gave a sudden, gentle lurch, startling her out of a book.

They had arrived, wherever that meant.

* * *

ͼ

 **END NOTE:**

Military hierarchy doesn't allow for friendship very far up and down the rank structure—and Felix is damn near at the bottom (which she has something of a problem with, but eh, it's not like she's going to be 'teaching anyone to be better' that's just how these things work. She's quite proud). And she wasn't exaggerating when she said she was invisible until the moment she materialized. Hux will basically treat her as a subordinate, because that is what she is. Even Mitaka is being way nicer than he needs to be.

This is probably closest to a horror story, psychological horror. I've never...ever written one of those before, so let's see how this is going to play out.

So basically...the premise is faceless mook #278221 gets swept up in the aftermath of Starkiller Base and way, _way_ in over her head. Thou shalt not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Ps, I'm not really great with romance and I don't see that happening anytime soon.


End file.
